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I'm in Xubuntu 16.04.1, having make version 4.1. I have some suspicions about this version, and would like to temporarily install the old version (3.81), which works fine with my package on another older machine.

What's the most safe way to do that? I don't want to break anything, just to run the old version a couple of times.

HEKTO
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2 Answers2

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GNU maintainers are usually pretty good about things like this: if you build and install make-3.81 from source, it will go into /usr/local/ by default (leaving the current version of make in /usr/bin), and you should be able to remove it completely by running sudo make uninstall from the source directory afterwards.

To illustrate:

steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ ./configure
steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ make
steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ sudo make install

Then check the version:

steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ hash -r make
steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Now uninstall it and check again:

steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ sudo make uninstall
steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ hash -r make
steeldriver@xenial-vm:~/src/make-3.81$ make --version
GNU Make 4.1
Built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Copyright (C) 1988-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
steeldriver
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First install make version 3.81 .This will replace the existing version.Then rename the executable file.Then install the version 4.1.Now you can use the old version.

anoop saju
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